The Lake eBook

He sat watching the hands of his clock, and a peaceful
meditation about a certain carnation that unfortunately
burst its calyx was interrupted by a sudden thought.
Whence the thought came he could not tell, nor what
had put it into his head, but it had occurred to him
suddenly that ’if Father Peter had lived a few
weeks longer he would have found means of exchanging
Nora Glynn for another schoolmistress, more suitable
to the requirements of the parish. If Father
Peter had lived he would have done her a grievous
wrong. He wouldn’t have allowed her to suffer,
but he would have done her a wrong all the same.’
And it were better that a man should meet his death
than he should do a wrong to another. But he
wasn’t contemplating his own death nor Nora’s
when this end to the difficulty occurred to him.
Our inherent hypocrisy is so great that it is difficult
to know what one does think. He surely did not
think it well that Father Peter had died, his friend,
his benefactor, the man in whose house he was living?
Of course not. Then it was strange he could not
keep the thought out of his mind that Father Peter’s
death had saved the parish from a great scandal, for
if Nora had been dismissed he might have found himself
obliged to leave the parish.

Again he turned on himself and asked how such thoughts
could come into his mind. True, the coming of
a thought into the consciousness is often unexpected,
but if the thought were not latent in the mind, it
would not arise out of the mind; and if Father Peter
knew the base thoughts he indulged in—­yes,
indulged in, for he could not put them quite out of
his mind—­he feared very much that the gift
of all this furniture might—­No, he was
judging Father Peter ill: Father Peter was incapable
of a mean regret.

But who was he, he’d like to be told, that he
should set himself up as Father Peter’s judge?
The evil he had foreseen had happened. If Father
Peter felt that Nora Glynn was not the kind of schoolmistress
the parish required, should he not send her away?
The need of the parish, of the many, before the one.
Moreover, Father Peter was under no obligation whatsoever
to Nora Glynn. She had been sent down by the School
Board subject to his approval. ’But my
case is quite different. I chose her; I decided
that she was to remain.’ And he asked himself
if his decision had come about gradually. No,
he had never hesitated, but dismissed Father Peter’s
prejudices as unworthy.... The church needed some
good music. But did he think of the church?
Hardly at all. His first consideration was his
personal pleasure, and he wished that the best choir
in the diocese should be in his church, and Nora Glynn
enabled him to gratify his vanity. He made her
his friend, taking pleasure in her smiles, and in
the fact that he had only to express a desire for it
to be fulfilled. After school, tired though she
might be, she was always willing to meet him in the
church for choir practice. She would herself
propose to decorate the altar for feast-days.
How many times had they walked round the garden together
gathering flowers for the altar! And it was strange
that she could decorate so well without knowing much
about flowers or having much natural taste for flowers.